Momordica charantia
Origin: St. Croix, US Virgin Islands
Improvement status: Landrace
Seeds per packet: 6
BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED
Life cycle: Annual
The bitter melon (Momordica charantia) is an African crop that has become popular around the world, especially in tropical countries and diasporic communities. In China, most bitter melons are relatively smooth and pale-skinned. In India, they look more like their wild ancestors — with rough, knobby skin. In Okinawa, they're somewhat intermediate between the two forms. And in the Caribbean, where this white bitter melon is found, they are also much more similar to the ancient African ancestors.
This white-skinned, white-fleshed bitter melon comes from the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. EFN co-founder Nate Kleinman purchased a few fruits in early 2022 at the central St. Croix Farmers Market, held every Saturday morning at the island's Agricultural Fairgrounds. One of the fruits was just beginning to turn neon orange (as is typical of all bitter melons, whether green or white-skinned), so Nate let it sit on a table to ripen further. After a few days, it had turned even more orange and split open. Inside were just four well-developed seeds. We planted three of those seeds a few months later at The Seed Farm at Princeton University, and produced enough seeds to plant a whole row at the EFN flagship farm in Elmer, NJ, in 2024. Nate found them to be delicious (especially after a long bitterness-cutting soak in salt water before cooking) and productive over a very long season, making more fruits every day right up until frost. He also very much enjoyed the tutti-frutti flavor of the red pulp that surrounds each ripe seed.
Bitter melons don't make many seeds per fruit, compared to similarly-sized cucurbits like zucchini and cucumbers, so producing a good-sized seed crop requires a lot of space and time (seeds must be collected every few days as the fruits ripen and split open). Consequently, and to enable as many people as possible to grow this much-sought-after crop (the beautiful and more mild-flavored white varieties are especially popular), we are only offering a few seeds per packet of this variety — and at $1.00 per seed, we are indeed charging a premium. Hopefully will be able to grow much more in future years! 25% of the packet price of every packet sold will be donated to the Virgin Islands Good Food Coalition, a project of the St. Croix Foundation for Community Development, which works to build a thriving and just local food system in the Virgin Islands.
GROWING TIPS: Provide a trellis! This variety really wants to climb. Start seeds as you would squash or cucumbers, either sowing directly in well-prepared ground once the soil starts warming up, or starting indoors a few weeks before planting out. Space plants at least a foot apart.
